Facebook denies EU privacy breaches

Social media giant Facebook has confessed that it is still tracking users without accounts. However, it added that it is a result of a flaw that it is currently addressing.

Facebook came clean only after the data protection authorities in Belgium brought the issue to the fore in a recent report, accusing  the social network of breaching EU data privacy laws and intentionally giving users a false picture of how it utilises information. The document also accused Facebook of a number of privacy breaches.

The social network’s European policy vice president, Richard Allan, said:

“The researchers did find a bug that may have sent cookies to some people when they weren’t on Facebook. This was not our intention – a fix for this is already under way.”

Allan further pointed out that Facebook is transparent when it comes to ads, personalisation, and cookies, and exercises good security practices when informing users of any instances where their account has been accessed from unknown devices.

Allan went on to describe a strategy that is reportedly also employed by a number of online services, such as Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google, where its services are offered free of charge, with ads only shown to users that it believes matches their interests.

Online privacy is a topical and controversial subject, so websites in the limelight, such as Facebook, continuously fall under scrutiny. However, it is also an issue for any SME that has access to customer details. This is why it is important that information security jobs are viewed as key roles by employers, as only security specialists can ensure that customer details are fully protected.